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Owsley Stanley, LSD Pioneer and Grateful Dead Collaborator, Dead at 76

Stanley created the Grateful Dead's dancing bear logo and helped popularize LSD in the Sixties

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March 14, 2011 5:10 PM ET
Owsley Stanley, LSD Pioneer and Grateful Dead Collaborator, Dead at 76
Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty

Owsley Stanley, the Sixties counterculture icon who collaborated with the Grateful Dead and popularized LSD in the psychedelic rock scene, died in a car crash in Canberra, Australia today at the age of 76.

Photos: The Grateful Dead

Stanley, who was at one time the Dead's tour manager and sound engineer, is best known for designing the group's iconic dancing bear logo and for creating and distributing high quality LSD. He is so synonymous with the drug that the Oxford English dictionary lists "Owsley" as a noun describing very pure LSD.

You can learn more about Stanley's fascinating life, his impact on the Sixties counterculture movement and his ongoing legacy in popular culture in The King of LSD, a profile that ran in the July 12-27 issue of Rolling Stone.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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